Christmas with Salut Salon

This album by the German group Salut Salon (although marketed in an English version, there are no English-language numbers included) is a great deal of fun, and only partly because it is a bit absurd in spots. Hearing Mr. Sandman translated into German and made into a Christmas song ("Liebster Schneemann," or "Dear Snowman") would fall under that category. But that's all part of the fun for a group that has not just pursued eclecticism, but blown by most of the existing benchmarks of eclecticism. First of all, there is the fact that the four women in the group both play the instruments of a very flexible piano quartet (each instrumental number conjures up its own little sound environment) and sing very fair harmonies, on the aforementioned "Liebster Schneemann" and elsewhere. There are a few pieces strongly associated with Christmas, but mostly the relationship is more allusive, and several numbers are introduced with one tune and then proceed into another. These relationships too are not random. The program alternates between vocal and instrumental numbers, and given its overall variety there's a very strong sense that each new piece is absolutely unexpected and yet intangibly related to the whole. There's a certain sense of artificiality to everything, especially in the pieces featuring the oddly stiff German conception of jazz, and this may either attract you or put you off. But there are major points for originality here, and they make for one of the most intriguing seasonal releases of 2015.